Chapter 12
HELGI HUNDINGSBANI IN SAXO AND IN THE EDDIC POEMS
Page 1
There are some sure bonds of union between Helgi, son of Sigmund, in the Edda, and Saxo's Danish King Helgi, son of Halfdan. Of these the plainest is the fact that both are called 'Helgi, the slayer of Hunding and Höthbrodd.' (1) But it is difficult to settle definitely the historical relations between the two accounts, Saxo's and that of the Edda. Saxo names neither Sigmund, Borghild, and Sinfjötli, nor Sigrún and her father Högni in connection with Helgi. Since, now, Sigmund and Sinfjötli at any rate, and possibly also others of the persons named, did not originally stand in connection with the Helgi-story, we have reason to believe that the form of the story of Helgi the slayer of Hunding and Höthbrodd which Saxo learned, had not taken up the persons named, and that to this extent this form of the story presented an older stage than the Helgi poems as preserved in the Edda. (2) Saxo knew, however (like the Eddic poems), that Helgi waged war against Höthbrodd and killed him; but this war is not carried on in Saxo (as in the Edda, with the exception of H. H., II, 19-24) for Sigrún's sake nor even against Sigrún's father, Högni. And since Saxo's form (in agreement with H. H., II, 20-21) represents an older stage in the development of the story in that it does not know Sigrún and does not make Helgi war against Höthbrodd for Sigrún's sake, we have positive grounds for holding that his account of the war between Helgi and Höthbrodd contains older elements which were driven out of the story in the Edda by the intrusion of the Sigrún-motive.
I cannot, therefore, accept Olrik's theory that Saxo's account of this war does not really refer to Höthbrodd, and that the name Hrókr (3) or Hrœrikr in Saxo was incorrectly replaced by that of Höthbrodd.
Saxo tells (p. 82) that King Höthbrodd of Sweden after undertaking an expedition against the Baltic provinces in order to extend his power, attacked Denmark. He fought with Roe in three battles and slew him in the last. When Helgi heard of this, he shut up his son Hrólf in the castle of Leire, to keep him out of danger. Then he had his men go about in the cities and kill the commanders whom Höthbrodd had placed there. He afterwards conquered Höthbrodd's whole army in a sea fight in which Höthbrodd himself fell. Thus Helgi revenged his brother's death and what his kingdom had suffered.
The points in which the account in Saxo and that of the Edda agree, may in all probability be regarded as saga features which belonged to an older form of the story of Helgi Hundingsbani, a form which was the common source of both accounts. These features may be stated thus: Helgi Hundingsbani was a Danish king. Höthbrodd, a foreign king, acts in a hostile manner towards one of Helgi's nearest relatives, and thereby forces Helgi to attack him with a fleet. Helgi conquers the whole of Höthbrodd's army, and kills Höthbrodd.
In other traditions also, the Shielding Helgi is said to have been a king who set out on a naval expedition.
Saxo represents the war against Höthbrodd as undertaken by Helgi in defence of the Danish kingdom; in slaying Höthbrodd Helgi avenges what the fatherland has suffered (patriae injuriam). In the last strophe of the First Helgi-lay, Sigrún says to Helgi, who has slain Höthbrodd: 'Hail, thou king!¨ thou shalt unopposed possess both Högni's dauther and Ringsted, victory and lands'; and Ringsted (Hringstaðir) is here named as Helgi's royal seat. We thus see that the Eddic poem also represents the war against Höthbrodd as a war which the Danish king wages against a foreign king in defense of Denmark and its royal seat. This seems, then, to have been the account given in the story which was the source of both Saxo and the Eddic Lay.
Therefore, notwithstanding the fact that the First Helgi lay was composed in a later time than certain strophes of 'The Old Lay of the Völsungs' and strophes in the last part of the Second Helgi lay, it seems in some respects to preserve an older form of the story; for it represents Höthbrodd as Helgi's real opponent. In this older form (as in the First Lay) Högni stood quite in the background in the war which resulted in Helgi's victory. We may say, in fact, that (if we except the strophes in the Second Lay which contain the word combat between Sinfjötli and Guthmund) the First Helgi lay is not really a working over of the older extant Helgi verses, although the author knew and was influenced by these, but a working over of a lost poem, which stood in connection with a Danish Helgi lay composed (as I shall prove later) in Britain. The verses (II, 19-22) which contain the word combat appear to be a remnant of this lost poem.
In one more particular there is connection between the Höthbrodd story in the Edda and that in Saxo. In I, 55, Höthbrodd is designated as 'the king who caused Ægir's death' (jöfur þann er olli / 'ögis' dauða). This is made clearer by what Saxo says (Bk. II, p. 81) of Helgi, after he had slain Hunding: Jutiae Saxonibus ereptae just procurationemque Hescae, Eyr et Ler ducibus commisit. N. M. Petersen and A. Olrik have seen (4) that Eyr = Icel. Ægir, just as Eydora in Saxo = Icel. Ægidyrr. It is evidently the same Ægir who is named in the First Helgi lay. The account in Saxo is easily fitted to that in the Eddic Lay, if we suppose that Helgi, according to the more original form of the story, appointed Ægir after Hunding's fall to protect Jutland against its enemies, and that Ægir was later killed by Höthbrodd. (5)
The Jutland chieftain called by Saxo Ler has the same name as the old Icel. Hlér. Him we may regard as the representative of Hlésey (Læssø) in the epic poem. In the Second Lay (in its extant form, at any rate) Helgi is brought into connection with Læssø; for, after Hunding's death, he says to Sigrún (II, 6): 'Our home is in Læssø.' The statement which Saxo took from an older epic poem, that Helgi committed Jutland to the charge of the chieftain Ler, practically means that Helgi had a fleet lying at Læssø to defend Jutland from an attack by sea.
As Ler is a representative of Læssø, so Ægir (Saxo's Eyr) is a representative of Ægidyrr, Egidora, Eider. The statement in the epic poem that Helgi intrusted Jutland to the charge of the chieftain Ægir, simply means that Helgi stationed troops at Eider to defend Jutland against a land attack from the south. (6)
The third earl, Hesca, whose name has hitherto not been explained, must then in like manner be a representative of some Danish place. I take this place to be Eskeberg, (7) now Schelenborg, on the peninsula Hindsholm on Fünen. This property was in the possession of Marsk Stig in the thirteenth century. When a fleet from Saxony or Wendland wished to attack the northern part of Jutland, the nearest way was through the Great Belt. It was natural, therefore, for the Danish king to station a chieftain on Hindsholm to hinder a hostile fleet from reaching northern Jutland through that channel. This Eska appears, therefore, to show that Eskeberg in Hindsholm was a place of importance as early as the beginning of the eleventh century.
I find in the Helgi poems another Danish eponym; but it occurs in the First Lay only, and is not found in Saxo. Helgi calls Höthbrodd 'the slayer of Ísung' (I, 20). This Ísung may be the poetic representative of Isefjord, including the principal place of assize (Thingsted) of the Danish kingdom, Isöre, which lay at the mouth of Isefjord on its west side. (8) When the poet calls Höthbrodd Ísung's slayer, he means that the hostile king made a devastating expedition through the Isefjord against the royal seat of the Danish kingdom. Although Ísung is named in the First Lay only, he was certainly not invented by the author of that poem. Since Ísung is entirely analogous with Eska, Ægir, and Hlér, he was probably, like the others, carried over from an older poem on Helgi Hundingsbani. There may well have been a pair of alliterating lines as follows:
Ísungr, Eska
Ægir ok Hlér. (9)
1.
H. H., I, has the heading: her hefr up queþi fra helga hundings
bana. þeira oc h. (i.e. havþóroddz); see the photo-lithographic
edition. In Saxo (ed. Müller, p. 82) we read of Helgo: 'Quo evenit,
ut cui nuper ob Hundingi caedem agnomen incesserat, nunc Hothbrodi strages
cognomentum inferret.' Back
2. This is also the opinion of Jessen, Über
die Eddalieder, pp. 22 f. Back
3. That Hrókr in Hrólfssaga Kraka
is the same saga-figure as Hrœrikr Sløngvanbaugi, I have,
I think, shown in my Studien, I, 171 f (Norw. ed., 164 f). Back
4. The former in Danm. Hist., I, 395; the latter
in Sakses Oldhist., I, 83. Back
5. Therefore the word in I, 55, cannot be taken
to be œgis 'of the terrifying chieftain.' Back
6. These observations were written before I saw
the following sentences in Olrik's Sakses Oldhist., II: 'Among the names
we meet Eyr and Ler, Saxo's way of pronouncing the old names Ægir
and Hlér. It must have been well on in the Middle Ages before the
giant nature of these inhabitants of the sea was forgotten so that they
could be transformed into Jutland earls' (p. 144). 'Several Jutish kings
are perhaps concealed under Saxo's earls. The most striking cases are
the first Jutish chieftains he mentions, viz. Hesca, Eyr, and Ler, the
earls whom Helgi appoints to rule Jutland after its recovery from the
Saxons; these earls have nothing to do in the Helgi story, and their original
giant natures make them little fitted for a place there: are not Ægir
and Hlér, the giants from Eider and Læssø, represented
as the oldest kings of Jutland, just as the frost giant Snjo is transformed
into a Danish king.....?' (p. 298). I have shown, I think, that Ægir
and Hlér have something to do in the Helgi story, and I see, moreover,
no convincing reason for holding that these eponyms were regarded in the
story as the earliest kings of Jutland. The sea giant, on the contrary,
was doubtless originally more than an eponym. Back
7. As regards the h in Hesca, we may compare in
Saxo Hesbernus = Esbernus; Hestia = ON Eistland; Hevindus = ON Eyvindr;
Høsathul = ON Eysöðull, etc. Back
8. See Henry Petersen, Om Nordboernes Gudedyrkelse,
pp. 13-18. Back
9. Ísung is otherwise explained by Müllenhoff
in Ztsch. f. d. Alt., XII, 351 f, and by Heinzel, Ueber die Nibelungensage,
p. 20 (688). Back
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